


Dragonflight: You're a Weyrwoman, Lessa!

by silveradept



Series: The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits: The Dragonriders of Pern [1]
Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Abuse, Animal Abuse, Childbirth, Classism, Commentary, Death in Childbirth, F/M, Genocidal Intent, Kidnapping, Meta, Misogyny, Murder, Nonfiction, Paatriarchy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Slut Shaming, Swearing, dead children, domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23142943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: A commentary read with excerpts of Dragonflight, the first of the Dragonriders of Pern novels.
Relationships: F'lar | Fallarnon/Lessa
Series: The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits: The Dragonriders of Pern [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663699
Comments: 9
Kudos: 20





	1. Introductions and iIrregularities

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Director's Cut of meta originally posted at [Slacktiverse](https://slacktiverse.wordpress.com).
> 
> Content notes for each chapter are in their respective posts, and all content notes in the work are in the tags.
> 
> Director's commentary will be rendered _[in a manner like this.]_

The year is 1968. Vietnam rages on, a third high-profile assassination rocks the United States...no, wait, this is a fantasy novel. Context only if necessary.

Hi, I'm Silver Adept, and this is hopefully going to be an interesting journey to embark on exploring the world of Pern through its novelization. I don't expect to make it all the way through to the current day's material, especially if my pace isn't going to be quick, but I think it's worth looking at the series and its origins, considering Pern is often a stop along the way for many fantasy readers as they transition from books written for younger audiences into ones written for older audiences. It's also an award-winning series written by an award-winning author, so there will be recommendations for it in addition to its placement on the transition spectrum.

_[I didn't think I'd make it at the time, but as it turns out…]_

I'm a junior deconstructor, at best, and I'm not always going to be able to spot everything, or even what may be the obvious thing to the reading audience. I will try to put content notes where I see their need. If I miss one, please let me know so I can add it back.

I wouldn't be trying this were it not for the excellent deconstructions available at [Ana Mardoll's Ramblings](http://www.anamardoll.com) and [Something Short and Snappy](http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com), so many thanks to them for showing the way.

My intention is to take the books in the order of their publication, so after the first two books of this apparent trilogy, we will depart for the Harper Hall trilogy before returning to finish The Dragonriders of Pern. Assuming things go that long. And the electronic copy I'm using has some interesting chapter designations, and is chock-full of typographic errors, so someone may have to backfill in where the actual chapter markers are in a paper copy, if there are any.

With that out of the way, let's begin.

**Dragonflight, Part I: Content Notes: animal abuse, domestic abuse, genocidal intent**

There may be an Introduction with various editions and reprints of this novel. It contains future knowledge that hints at spoilers of later books, and also ties in the Pern novels into a larger canon and universe than originally intended. For those reasons, it will be skipped every time it is encountered until we reach the point where that knowledge is obtained in the story. (If we get there, someone remind me to go back and explain why the introduction is a horrible thing to have in front, please.)

_[Thanks, younger self. The point of having a massively-spoilered introduction in the front of any of these works is that it renders what will be a very large plot point meaningless, except in how it affects the characters when they discover it. Pern straddles several genre lines, and much like any work that is somewhat aware of the genre conventions in which it operates, sometimes you can do something really clever through the subversion of expectations.]_

The actual narrative begins with the literary equivalent of a [Cold Open](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTeaser), where we are introduced to Lessa, and learn in short order the following:

  1. Lessa is a drudge, which is not a good place to be in, based on the description that the drudges are huddling together to try and get warm.
  2. Lessa is at least mildly telepathic, able to "touch the mind" of the watch-wher, a sentry-like creature chained up and begging for freedom, and may also have some sort of precognitive ability, based on her danger sense going off.
  3. Whatever danger is on the way, it's bigger than the immediate threat of Fax, the self-styled lord of the area.



I can see why this book is an award winner - it's a pretty economical description and hints strongly that Lessa is living in a [Crapsack World](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld).

After that, we're introduced to F'lar and Mnementh, a rider and his dragon. F'lar is clearly a traditionalist with a strong sense that he is entitled to a certain standard of living and deference. F'lar enjoys instilling fear into the humans of the Hold, and thinks that those same humans need to have a healthy fear of dragons and dragon riders. His brother, F'nor, appears at first blush to be a bit more laid back, but usually plays straight man to F'lar's continual insistence that he be treated according to each letter of the tradition regarding hospitality.

Then there's Fax, who, in another comic property, might draw comparisons to the Kingpin. Except Fax is not nearly as richly dressed and is known to be both a womanizer and greedy. But F'lar notices that Fax has a fighter's balance, and therefore is probably more dangerous than his appearance of dirty clothing lets on.

So F'lar and Fax trade veiled barbs at each other, and we learn that the dragon riders are here to find candidates to present to dragon eggs and see if they will pair-bond with the dragons inside when they hatch. There's a dragon queen in the eggs, which apparently requires a strong woman to ride. F'lar's definition of "strong", however, is a bit off.

> Adversity, uncertainty: those were the conditions that bred the qualities F'lar wanted in a Weyrwoman.

Given what we know of F'lar right now, it sounds like he really wants someone that he can dominate and cow on a regular basis, but that remains strong enough to keep control of the dragon. F'lar looks "pleasantly" at the drudges as he passes by them, ostensibly considering them as possible candidates, but he sees them as unfit.

> Overworked, underfed, scarred by lash and disease, they were just what they were - drudges, fit only for hard, menial labor.

Uh, F'lar? You're never going to find anyone with your preferred characteristics if you're going to dismiss entire classes of people, including the ones most likely to suffer adversity and uncertainty.

Exposition for this chapter comes from Lytol, who was a dragon rider until his dragon died in an accident. Lytol tells us that Fax abuses all his women, hurts any men that didn't obey him immediately, killed an entire Hold that opposed him, men, women, and children all, and intends to have his wife die in childbirth, but most importantly, _Fax thinks of himself as important as the dragon riders and doesn't respect the traditions_. So Lytol asks the two dragonriders to kill Fax.

Yeah. Let's stay on F'lar for a second. Because if the narrative wasn't smashing us over the head that Fax is the very worst person ever, based on actions of his past and the way he casually insults F'lar (whose perspective we see this chapter from), F'lar would qualify nicely as an antagonist. Maybe he will yet. His insistence that tradition be followed, his demands to be feted and his riders housed, and his assumption that he will be able to waltz through the population and pick out whatever women he wants to take back with him (but not any of those ugly drudges - there will be no class mobility on his watch) suggests to us that he's hidebound to the point where when something unexpected arrives, he will be thrown for a giant loop and sputter a lot about tradition and how improper something is, while his brother pragmatically rolls with it. 

So, as the chapter comes to a close, F'lar plans to kill Fax for disrespecting him and his way of life, and wonders openly how Fax could have come to power with the dragonriders right next door. The narrative says that Fax starved the area of resources, then led a mission to slaughter everyone there and salt the earth behind him. And tells us that Fax likely plans to kill the dragonriders, too. All while everyone is headed toward the place where the resistance to Fax was greatest.

Surely nothing could go wrong.


	2. Plot Contrivances

When we last left our band of protagonists, everyone was converging on Ruatha Hold, ostensibly to look for a candidate to ride a soon-to-be-hatched dragon, even though just about everyone is sure or trying to make sure no suitable candidates are available. Except one woman.

**Dragonflight, Part II: Content Notes: Misogyny, murder most foul, classism in spades, abuse, animal abuse, childbirth**

This part opens with Lessa doing her drudge work as everyone around her flat-out panics - Fax is coming, and he has dragonriders with him. This perks Lessa's ears, because, unlike the poor superstitious fools around her, she knows the truth about dragonriders, and intends to use them to retake her rightful lands.

Wait, what?

We're going to sacrifice a story about a talented woman making a meteoric rise in favor of a hidden princess story, with the Unfortunate Implications that come along with it? So that nobody has to feel uncomfortable about how a member of the untouchable class had exactly what they were looking for, but was able to successfully hide in plain sight because nobody believed that talent could come from such lower-class almost non-humans? How, for all their veneration of Tradition (Traditioooooon!) and of Might Makes Right, neither Fax nor F'lar has been able to conceive that Lessa could exist?

Oh, fine. Onward, then.

Apparently, even though Lessa doesn't believe any of the more fanciful stories about dragonriders, she does believe that they are somehow incorruptible, unable to be provoked or manipulated in obvious ways, and otherwise Inherently Superior to others. In short, she believes what F'lar believes about himself (although F'lar doesn't extend that courtesy to other riders, since his ego gets in the way of his compassion). This dragonrider-veneration seems...out of place for Lessa, especially because we are then treated to a rundown of how easily corruptible and manipulatable all the people who have been in charge of her have been to this point - greedy, vain, looking out for their own profits, and incompetent - except for the first one, who showed too much intelligence and ability, so Lessa murdered him. And regrets his death, even though she can't recall his name.

Onward, though, to Ruatha, where Lessa, revenge-obsessed sociopath, is already adept at guerilla warfare and sabotage. Lessa has apparently been aiding the growing of grass in the Hold, a big no-no for reasons that have yet to be revealed, although we finally get the first mention of Thread, the deadly organism that consumes all organic matter that it touches in single-minded devotion, here. In addition to her high crimes, such as murder and sabotage, we get the impression, and then a litany of proof, that Lessa has a long list of drudgery misdemeanors to her credit as well, starting a lack of fire in the hearth to warm Fax and company and continuing through the complete sabotage of the kitchen, apparently unnoticed by no less than three assistant cooks through the whole sequence, one of which Lessa sabotages directly by picking the wrong spice for him. Then again, considering an assistant cook sets her to a task by beating her and kicking her, perhaps we should be less surprised that things fall apart and people mysteriously end up dead.

Lessa's sabotage, however, is too good to be real. At least, in a world where the drudges are supposedly only good for menial labor, and apparently require beatings to get them to their tasks, that is. I can't imagine any cook that beats the kitchen staff would trust them to do something correctly unsupervised. The cook she sabotages with the wrong spice should know immediately that it's wrong. The other cooks in charge of the bread and the meat should be able to spot or feel too hot of a fire, or notice the spit turning improperly (especially since they use tied-up dogs to turn the spit) or smell things burning and salvage them. Lessa should not be able to do this in this close of quarters, unless everyone around her is spectacularly unobservant. Or there's something else going in her favor, like allies or friendly folk who see her doing things and turn a blind eye because they hate Fax as much as she does.

As this segment draws to a close, we hear of a few other acts of Lessa's, where good linens are eaten by bugs, soiled by dogs, and the bedrooms are dirty because someone left the windows open just enough. Those acts I can believe, because they can happen out of sight or be just wrong enough to look right. And it'd not like they can run out to a department store for replacements.

The next segment opens with a suspicious F'lar, who doesn't buy the story that the watch-wher from Part One is an old creature and prone to nonsense, because with his special dragon-augmented mental powers, he sees the signs of manipulation, and because he's certain that Ruatha couldn't have fallen this far apart in ten Turns of the planet. F'lar has met Fax and seen what kind of asshole he is, and has already been asked by someone to kill Fax, because Fax is that big of an ass to dragonrider traditions, and presumably can see the decay around him. F'lar can't accept that institutions can crumble rapidly, or that his traditions were probably swiftly superceded by the immediate reality of Fax's tyrannical rule, because Fax is still both hidebound and possessed of an inflated ego. Since he can't accept nature, it must be sabotage!

...or that would be the case, if the narrative wasn't invested in making F'lar out to be always right, and giving him the special "I saw what nobody else does!" badge to burnish said ego with. This scene would work so much better if F'lar believed this shit happened because of the traditions not being followed and F'nor is the one to notice Lessa's Jaegermonster-subtle acts of sabotage and start following up on it, leaving F'lar to look for any good-enough excuse to kill Fax in a duel of honor. Instead, F'lar gets to look good and promote his theory that someone in Ruatha survived Fax's genocide to his brother's more skeptical and realistic position.

And then there is food. Lessa-sabotaged food, unpalatable to everyone, which only aggravates Fax more and more until he slips and gives F'lar an opening.

> The day one of my Holds cannot support itself _or_ the visit of its rightful overlord, I shall renounce it.

And just in case we missed that this is a Very Important Thing, the dragons spontaneously roar, prompted by a flash of whatever special power F'lar has...and with a feminine touch, too. Lessa most likely thought she gave a subtle indication of her unvarnished joy as such a slip-up. 

F'lar tries to find whichever woman did such a thing, concluding (surprisingly logically) that the drudges are the most likely people to have that power surge he just felt, but not before some solid misogyny about how all of Fax's women are vapid airheads, except his dinner partner, Lady Gemma, whom Fax hopes dies by childbirth. Fax continues to lose his temper, until F'lar finds himself calling out Fax on his earlier statement, not entirely sure why he's picking a fight over this. Despite having been asked to find any excuse possible to kill Fax two chapters earlier. But F'lar can't admit he's going to murder Fax, so he assumes it must be this outside force compelling him to be confrontational. Because F'lar's ego won't allow him to believe that he has emotions, too.

In the middle of this stand-off, Lady Gemma goes into labor. Fax is delighted by this, proving again that he's a contemptible ass, and Fax thinks he has a solution to his problem of careless words.

> "Aye, renounce it, in favor of her issue, if it is male...and lives!"
> 
> "Heard and witnessed!" F'lar snapped, jumping to his feet and pointing at his riders..."Heard and witnessed!" they averred in the traditional manner.

And now, F'lar is in his element. He can enforce tradition on Fax and probably kill him, and nobody who witnesses such a murder will say anything about whether it was just, or even justified. The reader isn't supposed to, either, because we already know that Fax is several unprintable things, and that Lessa is waiting in the wings to snap up her rightful territory once Fax dies. Except for one tiny issue: the child. Who has to be a boy to set this plot in motion, and whom, based on Lessa's past, probably doesn't stand a chance to live to see its first birthday, once it has done the work of getting Fax killed. 

That poor kid is fucked.

So now everyone waits while the midwife is fetched and Gemma goes through a painful childbirthing. Apparently, only the midwife has a clue what to do and starts barking orders at the "silly gaggle" of women just watching. Lessa is seething with fury that her plan to provoke F'lar into fighting Fax was derailed by Gemma, and _tells Gemma to her face_ quietly about all of this, while Gemma is racked by the pains of labor. 

I think Lessa more than qualifies as a sociopath at this point. 

Gemma dies in childbirth, and for a moment, Lessa considers the possibility that she might have had allies in fighting Fax, before burying any feelings from that revelation as she hatches a last, desperate plan. And we're going to stop there, not because I love cliffhangers, but there's's a lot of stuff that has to get sorted out in the next few pages, and I'd rather do that at the beginning of a post instead of the end.


	3. Batman Gambits Pay Off

When we last left our sociopathic hero Lessa and inflated-ego traditionalist deuteragonist F'lar, Lessa's sabotage had finally brought the villainous lord Fax to his breaking point, and he made a rash promise to abandon Ruatha Hold to the child of Lady Gemma, if it lived and was a boy. Lady Gemma has died childless from labor complications, and Lessa is setting one final desperate plan in motion.

 **Dragonflight, Part II: Content Notes: Abuse, Murder, Considered sexual assault, Patriarchy, Classism**. Also, most likely, a Whatfruit.

I'm going to note at this point that violence seems to be the default men-on-women interaction here in these first few chapters. I have a sinking feeling it's going to continue through the rest of the book. I hope I'm wrong.

As Lessa enters the hall, her scheming self carefully covered under the disguise of an uninteresting drudge, Fax has been informed of the death of Lady Gemma. We would assume that he has also been told she died childless, but this is apparently not the case.

> "The child lives," Lessa cried, her voice distorted with anger and hatred. "It is male."..."Ruatha has a new Lord."

Which provokes Fax into a flying rage, and he beats Lessa savagely for what she says until she is knocked unconscious. Fax would continue to beat Lessa's unconscious body, but that F'lar calls him to attend to his oath. 

We'll get to that in just a second. First, though, we should take a look at this Improbability of Improbabilities. Here's the sequence of events as the narrative runs.

  1. Gemma dies in childbirth, and her child dies with her.
  2. The news of Gemma's death is transmitted to Fax. The news of the child's death is not.
  3. A drudge enters the hall and proclaims the live birth of a male heir,
  4. Fax denies the claim and beats the drudge senseless,
  5. and F'lar calls on Fax to honor his sworn oath.



And nobody, apparently, thinks to check and verify the claim. That has been boldly asserted by someone of the untouchable class to an assembled gathering of nobles, one of whom has a vested stake in making very sure that this claim is vetted. F'lar may be willing to let such a claim skate on he word of a drudge, because it gives him the excuse he needs to kill Fax, but _Fax most definitely wants proof_ , because if he can prove there's no heir, then there's no way that F'lar can challenge him on his oath. Problem solved. Fax is provoked, sure, but his first response should be to find the supposed child, even if his intent is infanticide. That he beats Lessa is in character for him, but that he doesn't go onward to verify that there is an heir is not credible.

Unless, that is, that Lessa's power did something to Fax, before she lost consciousness. Let's do a quick recap of Lessa's powers.

  * Limited telepathy with certain creatures
  * Limited precognitive abilities regarding danger
  * The ability to influence weaker minds so that she passes unnoticed, even while doing unsubtle things, or to implant feelings and thoughts in others that they believe are their own. (Later on, F'lar will witness Lessa transform herself into an unremarkable person, which is our explanation of how Lessa can commit blatant sabotage and not get caught.)



About the only thing she's missing is some form of telekenesis, and you have Lessa as a Force user, almost a decade before Star Wars is released into theaters. And given Lessa's abilities are fueled by rage and hate and her generally sociopathic view of Fax and anyone in the way of her revenge, I think I can safely say that Lessa is a Lady of the Sith Order.

So, Lessa's announcement comes with all of her angry ball of emotions attached, leaving Fax in such a blind rage that his cognitive functions are temporarily suspended and he acts to hurt the target that sent him such horrible news. Which gives F'lar enough time to act to divert Fax's attention away from the dubious claim and back onto the oath he swore that now requires satisfaction. Let's roll the tape.

> "It was heard and witnessed, Fax,"..."by dragonmen. Stand by your sworn and witnessed oath!"
> 
> "Witnessed? By drangonmen?" cried Fax with a derisive laugh. "Dragonwomen, you mean."..."Parasites on Pern! The Weyr power is over! Over for good,"...

And here Fax plays straight into Flar's hands - he insults dragonriders and their traditions in full view of many dragonriders and an audience that probably doesn't give a shit about whether Fax lives or dies. F'lar won't suffer that kind of obvious insult to his pride and ego, and while Lessa is still unconscious, the two men fight. Fax uses his bulk and speed to keep pressing F'lar into a defensive position, although he suffers a [Groin Attack](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GroinAttack) from his persistence. Ultimately, F'lar wins because Fax is too aggressive and F'lar is able to step around him and stab him in the heart through the back. With the rather grisly detail of the knife coming back out a touch as Fax hits the floor facefirst. 

Oh, and through this fight, F'lar has been able to identify the drudge that made the annoucement as the source of the disturbance in the Force he felt. So when the aftereffects of what he has just done kick in, F'lar leaves crowd control to his brother and takes Lessa back to his chamber. No grand pronoucements, no standing on tradition and the rest, because the details of _who the fuck is going to take over as the Lord of each of Fax's Holds when we find out there's no male heir_ is boring and beneath the dragonrider who just caused a succession crisis and quite possibly a bloody civil war. Let the practical brother deal with all the politics while he focuses on Lessa.

Despite being tired from battle, we find that F'lar can effortlessly carry Lessa to his chambers, because she's a slight thing with barely any weight at all. He examines her on the bed, revolted at the amount of filth she's covered in, but still able to see that she's of noble birth and pure blood despite her very successful-until-now methods of concealing herself from everyone. And then there's this:

> Delighted and fascinated by this unexpected luck, F'lar reached out to tear the dress from the unconscious body and found himself constrained not to. _The girl had roused_.

_[At this point, in the original, a picture of a coconut making a shocked face, captioned "WHAT." Every subsesquent space where this appears will be captioned in some flavor of Cocowhat.]_

F'lar is stopped from undressing Lessa because she's awake. Not because he's a decent guy, not because he thinks of women as beings worthy of respect, but because she's awake. And, presumably, F'lar's ego would not allow him to commit an assault with a live and aware victim, lest there be a witness to his carefully-constructed persona falling apart. Or that someone might object to those aspects of his conservatism that insist that women, no matter how noble, are supposed to be subordinate to him. F'lar, you're a walking embodiment of rape culture. Why are we supposed to treat you like a hero?

So, with Lessa awake, almost the first thing out of F'lar's mouth is "Name and rank." Not asking, of course, because F'lar would never stoop to asking a _woman_ a question, but demanding. Lessa, confronted with this haughty, egotistical prick in his bedchambers, is happy to hear the news of Fax's death, and reveals her lie in claiming her Hold for her own. F'lar is nonplussed, to say the least, that he's been tricked and killed another man because of a woman. It hurts having your ego popped like that, doesn't it, F'lar? And his reaction is pretty much the same as Fax's - he grabs Lessa's wrist and does her bodily harm in his anger, with the intent of doing her much more harm. Unlike Fax, though, F'lar intends to publicly shame her. 

That is, if he can catch her. Lessa bolts, leaving F'lar to try and pursue her on her home territory, ultimately requiring his dragon to catch her (which I would think is terrifying as fuck to Lessa, but the narrative insists otherwise). Along the way, he encounters F'nor. Who has done exactly the thing neither Fax nor F'lar did in their dick-swinging contest and clash of egos - he checked to see if there was actually a kid. Lo and behold, there is! And he's a male, too! F'lar's ego is saved, and he doesn't have to admit he was outclassed by a woman and tricked into murder. And, even better, he has Lessa trapped and unable to escape his revenge for her trickery. The narrative gives F'lar everything that he wants.

So of he goes into his tirade, commenting on how foolish Lessa is, and how he would have happily killed Fax, if she had only come to him with her claim right at the beginning. He claims that Lady Gemma would have still been alive if she had done this. Because, of course he would have recognized her as the rightful heir.

 _Bullshit._ F'lar has trouble recognizing the drudges as humans, before being able to conceive of the possibility that a woman could be the rightful heir of a Hold. But Lessa is supposed to have opened up to him with her secrets, trusted him implicitly, and then left him to do his work. Even though he's the man she's never met before. F'lar is demanding that Lessa trust him, because _he_ knows he's a trustworthy guy, regardless of what _she_ thinks about him.

After fluffing his own ego sufficiently and giving Lessa the lesson he believes she deserves, and gloating a bit that Lessa will be accompanying him back for the dragon hatching, F'lar realizes he might do better, or at least get a fig leaf of legitimacy, if Lessa appears to come willingly instead of by force. F'lar makes a hash of that, too, first by appealing to greed (why settle for a Hold when you can have a Weyr?), which goes over about as well as you would expect, since Lessa's primary motivation is revenge, not avarice. Then F'lar calls Lessa a coward, and in true Marty McFly fashion, it works.

Before everyone leaves, though, F'lar rewards loyalty by putting Lytol, the dragonless rider who told him to kill Fax, as regent of Ruatha, and the watch-wher knocks F'lar flat on his ass and tries to kill him, in a last-ditch effort to stop Lessa from her new life as F'lar's pet. Lessa calls it off mid-pounce, and the resulting effort breaks its back, making sure that Lessa no longer has any ties to Ruatha to come back to. With the last loose ends tied up, the riders take to the sky.


	4. New Life, New Name

When we last left our Lady of the Sith and the Jerk who thinks of her as his possession, Lessa's revenge is complete, except for the part where her Hold is in the care of a young boy and his regent, and F'lar thinks he's got the right candidate for the queen dragon that is about to hatch.

**Dragonflight, Part II: Content Noes: Patriarchy, Deaths of children**

The last part of the current segment is getting Lessa settled in with castoffs of clothes from other women that F'lar has had in his bedchambers, getting the dragons fed, and a bit more about how well-matched F'lar and his dragon are (they're both easily ruffled in matters of honor and saving face). Since the new egg is about to hatch, all the other riders are returning with their candidates as well. There's also the first mention of _between_ , the hyperspace dimension that the dragons travel through when covering great distances in a short amount of time.

The next scene starts with Lessa taking a bath, after seeing if there are potential escape routes. Not that we needed a ritual symbol of cleansing the body and soul and of transition and newness to drive the point home, of course, but here we are. Lessa luxuriates in the bath and is quite pleased with the feeling of soft clothes in what the narrative wants us to believe is her actual, quite feminine, personality. Her moment of girlish delight is cut short by F'lar's return, and after catching her reflection in a mirror, Lessa becomes entirely self-conscious about how beautiful she is.

> Why, the girl in the reflector was prettier than the Lady Tela, than the clothman's daughter! **But so thin.** Her hands dropped of their own volition to her neck, to the protruding collarbones, **to her breasts, which did not entirely reflect the gauntness of the rest of her**. [Emphasis mine]

So let's be clear here: Lessa is probably thin in a malnourished sort of way, except, of course, for her boobs, which somehow fare better than the rest of her. Despite an obviously athletic life, despite her lack of nutrition, despite a lack of any indication at all that she lives well enough to have developed fat reserves, Lessa has good-looking breasts. Great Maker forbid that F'lar have brought back an ugly girl as his choice, so reality itself bends to the will of the narrative.

Not that he'll admit it. F'lar teases Lessa about her attractiveness by saying she'd be good enough for his brother. I think we're supposed to get a Beatrice-Benedick feel from these two, but Lessa is not, in any sense, F'lar's equal, nor would F'lar ever permit that to happen, so instead we get F'lar being a condescending ass (his default personality) and Lessa taking it because she knows how trapped she is in this space. F'lar is the sleazy boss that harasses all the female employees and enjoys watching them suffer, knowing they can't retaliate against him. And to prove that point, F'lar orders Lessa to take care of the wound he received while fighting Fax, and Lessa just can't bring herself to give as much rough as she's received from him. We're supposed to believe it's because of a burgeoning attraction, with as much description if how virile and muscular and so very _male_ F'lar is. I'd like to think that Lessa is making a cold calculation about what kind of consequences will likely happen if she gives him what he deserves, and she decides that she's had enough of the physical abuse for now, but maybe later, when she does know all the escape routes, she'll explain to him in excruciating detail just how much of an ass he really is. 

There is food, which is also luxurious compared to Ruatha, and more of this burgeoning attraction between Lessa and F'lar, with her frustration that he gets to see her on full alert at everything and his complete lack of empathy regarding how she must feel in a new and strange place that makes odd sounds and has new ways of everything. F'lar takes delight in Lessa's fear and suffering and being off-balance, because he's the kind of guy that enjoys women being put "in their place". And then, the Hatching starts, and F'lar threatens to strip Lessa if she doesn't put on the candidate's dress right this instant. No, he doesn't make any sort of offer of privacy, or even try to avert his eyes from her. And when she's done changing, he physically hauls her along to Mnementh and they go off to the Hatching, with F'lar having given her the most basic of advice about how to get through it.

The Hatching itself is horrible. Lessa is placed in yet another group of shrieking girls, and her contempt for them brings back our Sith sociopath of Ruatha Hold. She watches newly-hatched male dragons maul children they don't match up with (yes, much like the Jedi Order, the dragonriders prefer their candidates young and lacking emotional attachments to the world) before the screams of the still-apparently-hysterical women return her attention to the golden queen egg. The girls don't fare any better, with one girl's neck violently broken and another clawed "shoulder to thigh" who will also die. Lessa's contempt for the others' inability to dodge puts her eye-to-eye with the new hatchling, and there's the spark of connection where Lessa pair-bonds with Ramoth, the new queen, and everything else is secondary to making sure that Ramoth is taken care of...despite, as Lessa points out, Ramoth having just killed two children.

So, of course, F'lar is right, yet again, and can have his ego stroked that his single selection was the one who would Impress upon the queen. It must be nice being right all the time.

But let's leave F'lar of the Immense Ego and go back to the ceremony of the dragons hatching. So dragonriders go out into the world, choosing young men and women from all around the world, bring them back to their Weyr, where, if a dragon doesn't find them worthy of becoming their lifemate, the children could potentially _die._ For what the appropriate response is apparently...don't be afraid. No pressure or anything. I have to think something like this gets downplayed when the parents get told. "It's a great honor to be chosen! ...assuming they survive. But Honor! Glory! Dragonflight!" And nothing is said about what happens to candidates that don't get dragons but manage to survive. Are they kept for the next clutch? Are they sent to become the support staff for the dragonriders? Not that Lessa cares at this point, but we could stand to know.

Still. Children. Potentially as a fighting force. Or dead. And these are the traditions F'lar wants to uphold.


	5. Scheming Women, Backfiring Plans

When we last left F'lar of the Immense Ego and Darth Lessa, Lessa had just obtained her dragon companion, Ramoth, guaranteeing she would be the next Weyrwoman of F'lar's Weyr, ensuring the two of them can continue to be forced to spend time together. They do have something in common, though - they both have some belief that they are better than everyone around them.

**Dragonflight, Part II: Content Notes: Misogyny, Rape**

There's a short timeskip after the aftermath of the Hatching, leading to the part of a princess movie where the princess has to learn all the boring details of court life, when all she wants is to go have adventures. R'gul and S'lel, the Weyrleader and his lieutenant are Those Two Guys, the perpetually bickering pair, neither of whom is able to impart any useful information and that resist her pushback against their rote instruction with "It's tradition." (Traditioooooooon!) For more than a few pages, we have Lessa working through the equivalent of the classics, slowly realizing their koan-like natures, in between bouts of snark at the last, now-deceased queen and her rider and how F'lar wouldn't have touched her with a ten-foot pole and the desire to go back to Ruatha and oust the regent and the child. I still maintain that Lessa is entirely okay with infanticide, and that is not a quality to have in a leader.

To get away from history lessons, Lessa gets informed of a logistics shortage. R'gul is getting ready to trade with the holds instead of using the dragons to go grab everything for the Weyr and leaving everyone else to take the scraps. Not everyone is sending their proper tributes, and there's only one half-staffed Weyr instead of a full five. And F'lar is waiting, as is tradition, for the mating flight to take over so that he can dominate legitimately. So Lessa hatches another plan, not only to depose R'gul, but also to bring all the Weyrs and their corresponding holds under her control.

It must be tiring for F'lar to be right all the fucking time - avarice does become Lessa's motivation to be a great Weyrwoman. And it gives her a purpose and plot to move forward with - apparently, Lessa isn't alive if she isn't scheming something and keeping secrets.

This time around, however, when Lessa tries to use the Force and goad the dragonriders into raiding the holds, her Jaegermomster-subtle strike is picked up by F'lar, who reacts as F'lar does - violence against her body, and a strong backlash against her mentally. And, as always seems to happen, Lessa's plan to encourage raiding and supplying the Weyr backfires because the rider she encouraged to raid draws too much attention to himself.

Y'know, this pattern is chock-full of issues, now that I look at it. Lessa hatched her original plot, with her ambition to kill Fax, and it sustained her for ten years, while she...sabotaged the Hold and generally made things miserable for the people that were there, while Fax was away. And then she maneuvered F'lar to kill Fax, finally, only to be undone by her lie coming true. And now, she's trying to provoke the dragonriders into fighting the Holds, but the one she chooses lacks discretion, and F'lar snuffs out her attempts. Which is setting up Lessa as the conniving, shrewish, bitchy woman who needs a Strong Man to teach her the right and proper way to be submissive to men, and to stop trying to advance her own interests and just dutifully accept her powerless role. We're in Taming of the Shrew territory instead of Much Ado About Nothing, but without any signs that the classic Shakespeare inversion is on the way.

And, right on cue, we now have a mating flight opportunity, which means F'lar, a bronze rider, will get his shot at becoming the Weyrleader if Mnementh can mate with Ramoth. So, the dragon surrogates will have a dominance fight in proxy to F'lar and Lessa. Because the bronzes are the ones that go after Ramoth as she takes to the air. 

Once aloft, though, Lessa and Ramoth gestalt into one consciousness, running solely on instinct and wanting to get away from the stupid boys that think they can catch her. As the "lesser" ones drop off, Lessa-Ramoth goes down to taunt the survivors, thinking about how great she is, and the inevitable fouling-of-plans happens, and Mnementh is able to catch Ramoth and mate with her.

Which apparently means that F'lar has free reign to have sex with Lessa without her consent. Since she was never informed about what happens when dragons go on a mating flight, and because I think it's safe to say that having a dragon in heat in your head qualifies as a sufficiently altered state of mind to be unable to give a true consent. The narrative carefully constructs things, though, to give credence to the "but she was asking for it" defense:

> The mating passion of the two dragons at that moment spiraled wide to include Lessa. A tidal wave rising relentlessly from the sea of her soul flooded Lessa. With a longing cry, she clung to F'lar. She felt his body rock-firm against hers, his hard arms lifting her up, his mouth fastening mercilessly on hers as she drowned deep in another unexpected flood of desire.

And, fade to black, with F'lar once again getting everything he wants, now including Lessa and the Weyr.

And F'lar even gets his victory lap, with no mention of how Lessa actually felt the morning after, when her mind was clear, other than an impassive look on her face and a warning from Mnementh to be careful of her. And, look, conveniently on the horizon, a distraction on the form of an invading army!

...which we'll get to next time.


	6. You and What Army?

When we last left them, F'lar the Egotistical had nonconsensual sex with Lessa while their dragons mated, placing F'lar in charge of the Weyr with Lessa, properly timed to greet an invading force from the Holds around them that are understandably pissed off about their supplies being raided.

**Dragonflight: Part II: Content Notes: Kidnapping**

So it's time for the War Council of the Weyr, and here we hit one of the strong issues of worldbuilding in Pern square on. With an army at their gates, F'lar puts into action a fairly simple plan to prevent the army from attacking them, after explaining the situation doesn't look as bad as possible. First, he shoots down the idea of using flame against the people:

> "That's enough!" F'lar said in a hard voice. "We are dragonmen! Remember that, and remember also - never forget it - this fellowship is sworn to **protect**.

Which is all nice and good, but according to the history that's been hinted at up to this point, the thing that is being protected against hasn't been around for several generations. When the Holds started shorting their tribute, the dragonriders would only really need to intimidate a little bit to get their proper allotment. Maybe nobody gets toasted, but a nice demonstration of what dragons are capable of should be enough to remind everyone who holds the power.

Which is where F'lar goes next.

> "...it's another matter to face a dragon, hot, tired, and cold sober."  
>  [...]  
>  "The mounted men, too, will be too much occupied with their beasts to do any serious fighting."

Ultimately, however, F'lar settles on the plan that risks the least dragonriders, provides the most leverage, and works the fastest.

> "Ask yourself this, dragonmen, if the Lords of the Holds are here, who is holding the Holds for the Lords? Who keeps guard on the Inner Hold, over all the Lords hold dear?"

Lessa approves of this plan wholeheartedly in a way that suggests she wouldn't mind some bloodshed, too. So the riders go out, use their teleporting dragons, and take sufficient hostages from the Holds to bring back for leverage over the incoming armies. And then plan to go out and intimidate the armies into a proper submissive pose to the Weyr.

Um, tell me again why the dragonriders haven't been doing this _all the time_? Giant, teleporting, potentially fire-breathing dragons versus standard human armaments and armor, hidden in forts. Even if the dragons don't ever attack, siegecraft against any one Hold should be easy - the dragons don't have to bring their supplies with them, they can rotate in reinforcements in the blink of an eye, they are their own siege engines and air superiority, and dragons and their riders are going to easily be able to eat any supplies not taken into the Hold. And, possibly, those taken in, depending on how big the sizes of the rooms are. The dragonriders could possibly teleport in their invading force, one dragon at a time, if even one room in a Hold is big enough to hold a dragon. It doesn't make sense - even a half-staffed Weyr such as Benden should easily be able to dominate the area surrounding. Including any trade routes. The situation where the Holds start to feel independent of the Weyrs and short them, disrespect them, and think of them as useless shouldn't happen, even if the initial plan was for isolation during a pause in their traditional action. The minute hunger started, there would be polite reminders of obligations, and then very impolite ones. We are apparently supposed to believe that several successions of Weyrleader chose not to enforce traditions or to take their fill from the Holds, despite being in the obviously superior position. I don't buy it.

So, as F'lar puts his plan into play, we see the action and justification from one of the Lords Holder, who complains that the dragonriders are lazy and they repeatedly steal promising young men and women that could have been used for political marriage for their Searches. (Who are never heard from again, we note. What happens to candidates that don't Impress, again?) The raiding of supplies, of course, is the last straw. So they intend to tell the Weyr to be self-sufficient from now on. A plan that rather quickly falls apart at the appearance of actual dragons and the notification that all of their noblewomen have been taken hostage, a clear violation of the traditions about the sanctity of their Holds. F'lar, apparently, has no trouble not enforcing traditions he doesn't like. In any case, the Holders surrender, agree to tribute and to bring their Holds back into form from when Thread fell, and depart.

That said, the Lords Holder aren't actually coming with unreasonable requests, even though we're supposed to key into their contemptuous attitudes as the reason why they get marked with the antagonist tag. Surely the dragonriders can develop a logistics and support division that allows them to farm, raise animals, and make things so they can become self-sufficient in times of peace and prosperity. It's not like they don't have teleporting dragons that would let them continuously plant, harvest, and herd, regardless of what season it is on the planet. They could choose new riders from within the children of their own ranks, or at the very least, ask for volunteers to become riders from other places. I'm sure there are plenty of non-inheriting sons that are willing to gamble their lives on becoming a dragonrider. And "unmarriageable" daughters could be shipped off to the Weyr for a shot at becoming a queen rider.

But F'lar is uninterested in being reasonable in any aspect of his life. F'lar wants to be _in control_ of everything in his life. So instead of trying to live harmoniously with his neighbors, he subjugates them with hostages and a show of military force. Instead of letting Lessa be her own person and a capable leader, F'lar restricts her, thinks of her has his property, and insists that she remain in the place he thinks she should be, cloaking himself in tradition (Traditioooooon!) as the justification for his controlling nature. F'lar is a monster cut from the same cloth as Fax, and then amplified because he has actual power, but he's a protagonist, so we're supposed to ignore that. Even though F'lar chose to uphold the claim of a tyrant and conqueror and pass a Hold to a barely-born child, rather than recognize the much older claim of one who is of the noble line of the place, because the conqueror and the child were men and the noble is a woman. Because he wanted to take Lessa back with him and control her. Because F'lar sees the world in a very specific way, and will use all his power to enforce that vision on anyone else. F'lar is a cult leader with actual power, which is a very dangerous thing. If the narrative wasn't so invested in proving him right at every phase, he'd be the novel's second, more dangerous antagonist, the one that Lessa unleashed unintentionally when she used him to kill Fax.

So when, in the middle of this grand plan going according to plan (because the narrative is very invested in showing us that women planning and trying to exercise power will always fail because they reach beyond their role, because that role is reserved for men, because Authorial Fiat) Lessa upstages him by flying out on Ramoth, F'lar is entirely pissed off and thinks about his standby tactic for dealing with uppity women - abuse and violence. Which his dragon cautions him against, but makes it out to be that it would be more of a [Slap-Slap-Kiss](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SlapSlapKiss) situation, when we've already seen that F'lar will do real damage to Lessa if she provokes him where he can retaliate without witnesses.

So, with the Lords Holder sent packing, Part II comes to a close, and the plot finally arrives at where it has really wanted to be since the beginning - Threadfall.

This seems like a good spot to point out that if it seems like we've basically been running plot summaries up to this point, it's because the story itself hasn't delved into a lot of detail about the world and its characters up to this point. The story started with foreshadowing, but it also started at the _end_ of Lessa's revenge, instead of the _beginning_ , where those ten Turns of Lessa hiding, biding her time, planning her strategies, engaging in sabotage, and slowly trying to accumulate enough resources to strike would have been a perfect vehicle for worldbuilding and character development. It could have been a novel all by itself.

And then, as Lessa is whisked away to her new life, we take a short stop at the hatching and then jump forward again to the breaking point of another crisis, with food shortages and antagonistic military parties, with only a few gestures toward history, lore, and literature, mostly saying "Yeah, there's a world out there, and history, and lore, and others, but you'll have to take our word for it because ooooh, conflict!" The opportunity there for even a little bit of characterization (F'lar is an impatient teacher, Lessa is a shit student on the surface, F'nor is remarkably good at explaining the practical aspects of everything and tempering the excesses of his brother's grandiose desire for absolute control, etc.) is dashed beyond in the story's haste to arrive where it could have conceivably started. The dash through stories also gives us some disorienting changes - in Part I, it's like we're playing a first-person adventure game, because we see individual staff, riders, and antagonists, with names or titles. In Part II, though, we've changed over to a turn-based strategy game where there are some named elite units, but mostly everyone else fades to generic unit names and responsibilities, and the logistical staff that were prominent in Part I are vanished, replaced only by the occasional advisor that reports on the conditions of the commoners. Part III? Could either be a first-person shooter, squad-based shooter, or a real-time strategy game, depending on how tightly the narrative wants to zoom in on how Thread gets fought. But the "little" people who keep everything running smoothly are gone, and there's no indication they'll be back. F'lar invisibling people makes sense, it's what he does, but Lessa has spent a lot of time in those ranks, and as a potential subversive, it would make a lot more sense for her to be mixing it up with those people regularly. Unless we're supposed to believe F'lar's control is that good over Lessa, because the alternative is that Lessa has stopped caring about her old life because dragon-ness is just Inherently Superior.

To avoid these shifts in perspective, the narrative could have started with Lessa's Impression and training as Weyrwoman as Part I, with this Holder conflict as the capstone, and the hitting Threadfall as Part II, where everything Lessa has learned sails out the window as the battle plan makes contact with the enemy. I know that later books will come back and start to fill in the backstory of various things hinted at here, but a little care and planning up front might have made for a better series payoff. As it stands, we're a bit rushed, and the narrative hasn't really given us much reason to root for Lessa, since it tends to enforce the idea that she's Objectively Wrong, or for F'lar, since he doesn't have to bend, grow, or otherwise deviate from his controlling personality to get anything done. The character I'm rooting for the most right now is F'nor, because he actually appears to be a good and decent person with brains in his head. What a different series this would be with him in charge.

Instead, the Terrible Twosome go forth to fight a menace from the past.


	7. Who Put These People In Charge, Again?

When we last left our anti-hero and the Control Freak, the puny humans had waved their swords and then been sent scurrying back to their castles so that the real heroes could be left alone to do their planet-saving preparations. F'lar has mentally threatened violence against Lessa (again), who continues to find joie de vivre in trying to establish herself as [The Man Behind The Man](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheManBehindTheMan) in the Weyr. There's no way this can end well.

**Dragonflight: Part III: Content Notes: Rape, slut-shaming, PTSD**

But! Petty politics must be put aside, for the signs are now clear that Pern is about to be visited by a menace from the past: Thread. Although the narrative has not actually done more than hint at what Thread is and does yet at this point, the Introduction and it's spoiler-knowledge says exactly what Thread is and what was developed to fight it, which is clearly the result of [what was spoilers then being considered common knowledge now](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItWasHisSled). Leaving that aside, though, Dragonflight now is starting to take on the shape of a classic fantasy novel. "An ancient evil has arisen, after many years (Turns) of peace and prosperity, during which time most people forgot about the evil and turned themselves to more petty matters. To fight this evil, a band of adventurers have formed, consisting of a commoner (F'nor, for reasons of being F'lar's half-brother and further down the chain of power than F'lar), a wizard (F'lar, regrettably), and hidden royalty (Lessa), along with some support muscle (the dragonriders) who will journey across the world, foiling evil plots and defeating the ancient evil along the way." And possibly a bolted-on love plot or love triangle to break up the action. So, yeah, now we're getting into the groove of the actual story that was intended, so hopefully there's some meatier things to tear into here.

Part III opens with F'lar and the War Council having to deal with contrarianism from R'gul, who now has the part of being the voice of the line of inquiry the Lords Holder were pursuing, before their subjugation at the end of Part II. The narrative informs us that R'gul is jealous of F'lar taking away the Weyrleader position from him (which reminds me, there really does need to be a way of having older Weyrleaders on as Weyrleader Emeritus or Immediate Past Weyrleader or something to prevent this exact situation from happening), but also points out to us, perhaps unintentionally, that R'gul is an _excellent_ judge of character:

> Wasn't F'lar's pride sufficiently swollen by having bluffed the Lords of Pern into disbanding their army when they were all set to coerce the Weyr and dragonmen? Must F'lar dominate **every** dragonman, body and will, too?

Yes, yes he must.

And, in case we had forgotten, the narrative allows F'lar to be entirely correct yet again in interpreting ancient signs and rock formations, as well as being able to explain away why the ancient menace hasn't been back in a while.

> "There have been long Intervals before. The Red Star does not always pass close enough to drop Threads on Pern. Which is why our ingenious ancestors thought to position the Eye Rock and the Finger Rock as they did ... to confirm **when** a Pass will be made."

Wait, **WHAT?** Exactly when were we going to find out that the people of Pern have relatively advanced scientific knowledge, even though the world has fallen apart, even by their standards? That casual statement from F'lar indicates at least understanding the Copernican model of planetary bodies, at least a basic idea of gravity not just as "the thing that pulls us back to the planet" but "the thing that pulls things toward each other", knowledge that the orbits of bodies may be elliptical or irregular (so there are Intervals instead of a constant yearly Threadfall), and the ability to interpret the ancient structures as being a calendar device for a particular astronomical event, like henges may have been, instead of as some other ritual item. What sort of stuff is being taught in the songs and legends that Lessa has had to memorize, recite, and scrawl many times over? It would be so nice to know.

Back to the narrative. F'lar insults R'gul's skepticism, after giving him an ultimatum that he can accept F'lar as the Weyrleader and obey, or he can take his dragon and go somewhere else. Then, he distributes orders for fliers to go outside and look for more good candidates for dragonriders from the Holds, since he thinks there aren't enough boys in the caverns at the Weyr to cover the likely egg spread, watch the weather, make sure the tributes arrive safely, go clean out satellite bases of operation, and retrieve any history records that might still be there (because it hasn't already been collected before? What the fuck kind of operation is being run here?) and other such logistical matters involving dragonrider oversight. After dismissing the riders, F'lar returns to his chambers, where his thoughts turn to love.

> That girl was going to scrub her hide off with this constant bathing. She'd had to live grimy in Ruath Hold, but bathing twice a day? He was beginning to wonder if this might be a subtle Lessa-variety insult to him personally. F'lar sighed. That girl. Would she never turn to him of her own accord? Would he ever touch that elusive inner core of Lessa? She had more warmth for his half-brother, Fnor, and K'net, the youngest of the bronze riders, than she did for F'lar, who shared her bed.

That would be because they aren't controlling assholes, F'lar.

Also, that would be because they haven't raped her, either. But F'lar has _feels_ about that. That look remarkably like apologia.

> He caught her arm and felt her body tense. He set his teeth, wishing, as he had a hundred times since Ramoth rose in her first mating flight, that Lessa had not been virgin, too. He had not thought to control his dragon-incited emotions, and Lessa's first sexual experience had been violent. It had surprised him to be first, considering she had spent her adolescent years drudging for lascivious warders and soldier-types. Evidently, no one had bothered to penetrate the curtain of rags and the coat of filth she had carefully maintained as a disguise. He had been a considerate and gentle bedmate ever since, but, unless Ramoth and Mnementh were involved, **he might as well call it rape**.
> 
> Yet he knew someday, somehow, he would coax her into responding wholeheartedly to his lovemaking. He had a certain pride in his skill, and he was in a position to persevere.

_[Coco-what.]_

So, Lessa tenses when he touches her, because he's an abusive asshole. The rest of this, however, is rape apologia - he didn't control himself when he could have, a detail conveniently left out in that mating flight from Lessa's perspective, and again we are reminded that Lessa got no preparation for the feelings that came from a dragon in heat. He would have felt better about his own rape if she had already been raped beforehand. But he won't actually call that first one rape, nor any of the times that he has had sex with her since, probably without her consent, because that would mean admitting he violated her without consent. And that he might not be able to win her over at all because of that, which would mean something was out of his control. And that he did something wrong. Neither of which his pride and nature will allow. Instead, he continues to believe that if he rapes Lessa enough, eventually she'll fall in love with him. And considering the narrative has always given F'lar what he wanted, I have a sinking feeling that he's going to be right. 

F'lar casually insults the previous Weyrwoman, both in habits and in attractiveness, while marveling at Lessa's insistence on cleanliness in the bedchamber (from her drudge past, she probably knows what happens to dirty dishes and bodies left out), and wonders why Lessa might be a bit acidic at him because of a woman he could have gotten pregnant (but has plausible denial on, and she seduced him, anyway, even though he was willing), meaning he's also been having sex with others than his Weyrwoman, which may or may not be considered scandalous. Even though he slept with this other woman, he still calls her a slut (she has "the amorous tendencies of a green dragon", which suggests that everyone in the Weyr thinks Green riders are easy).

Lest we think that F'lar is the only horrible person in this pairing, Lessa suggests murdering R'gul to silence his skepticism, a position with which F'lar privately agrees, but publically will put out on the front line against Thread, possibly hoping he will get killed that way, as David did to Bathsheba's husband, which is a much easier position to be able to work with. And we are reminded that Lessa is forever scheming in some way, probably against F'lar, so we should hold them equally contemptuous. Except Lessa has only ever been thinking about such things - F'lar has done both rape and murder. I still have no real incentive to root for either of them, according to the narrative, anyway.

And then, while discussing signs and portents, Lessa has a flashback to when Fax invaded.

> Her voice was a barely articulated whisper. Her eyes were wide and staring. Her hands clenched the edge of the table. She said nothing for such a long interval that F'lar became concerned. This was an unexpectedly violent reaction to as casual question.

So Lessa starts to recount the tale, clearly disassociating from the events, and F'lar...has empathy, although he doesn't act on it (much to the great snark of Mnementh). Lessa doesn't get very far before Ramoth wakes up, providing a clear distraction.

And now the narrative has given enough proof to substantiate what more senior deconstructors have probably suspected for a long time - Lessa hasn't been able to recover from her trauma because she doesn't have a supportive environment, a partner that is actually willing to listen to get feelings and not rape her, nor any sort of way of excluding F'lar from her life until she's recovered. They're all traumatic still because the trauma keeps being inflicted. And F'lar is a big enough asshole that even when Lessa is demonstrating that things are not okay with her, he continues on as if everything were just fine. Fuck you, F'lar, you rapist ass.

And on that traumatic note, we'll leave off for next time, where we learn the secrets of dragon teleportation.


	8. Exposition! Blessed Exposition!

When we last left them, F'lar almost admitted to himself, although to nobody else, that he had and continues to traumatize Lessa, who hasn't been able to recover from the original trauma she suffered at Fax's hands nearly thirteen years ago - she never got time to decompress and get closure, and the way F'lar treats her is pretty much ensuring she stays in the survival mode she had to adopt for all that time at Ruatha.

Additionally, failing to make the cut for human decency from last week was a comment alleging that sexual assault was so commonplace in the ancient and medieval worlds that we should not be making as big of a deal about it when it appears in a fantasy pastiche-world written into existence in 01968. The exercise of how long and hard to laugh at the premise is left to the reader.

**Dragonflight, Part III: Content Notes: Domestic Abuse, Slut-shaming, Classism**

We get to put all that aside, though, to finally learn the mechanics of going _between_ and taking advantage of dragons as hyperspace travel entities. Mostly so that F'lar doesn't have to dwell too long on the wrongness of what he's doing to Lessa. Apparently, the trick to using the hyperspace drive is to have a very firm picture of where you want to go in your head, and then to command the dragon to go to that spot. So there really isn't anything stopping dragons from appearing inside holds or other enclosed spaces, except...

> "Once we came across a dragon and a rider entombed together in solid rock. They...were...very young."

So, apparently, there's either some variance in the actual location relative to the visualization, or the materialization is exactly where the visualization is, without any draconic compensation for size or location. Which, y'know, is kind of stupid that there isn't a failsafe built in somehow so that situations where the jump is going to be off don't end so lethally. Also, how do entire wings of dragonriders manage not to telefrag each other if they're all envisioning the same spot for arrival, if there's no compensation for where they arrive?

Or, as it turns out, compensation for _when_ they arrive, as Ramoth and Lessa arrive at Ruatha on the day Fax slaughtered everyone but her in her family. And then hop forward to Ruatha on the day Fax dies. And then finally hop back to F'lar in the present. Who is _livid_ , and reacts as F'lar does, by violently shaking Lessa so much that she can't even organize her thoughts enough to answer his increasingly irate questioning.

> She made no move to evade him as he grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently.... He was spitting with anger, punctuating each question that tumbled from his lips with a head-wrenching shake.... She reached out to catch at his arms, but he shook her again....Lessa cried louder, clutching at him distractedly because he kept jerking her off balance. She couldn't organize her thoughts with him jolting her around.

Lessa is having a time-loop-induced flashback and running a million "what if?" scenarios in her head, but F'lar cannot see her distress, because he has questions that must be answered. Fuck you, F'lar.

Once he finally calms, and Lessa explains, we find ourselves in possession of a time loop - Lessa-of-the-future warns Lessa-of-the-past about Fax, so Lessa saves herself after she's been saved. Which has us wonder how Lessa saved herself at the initial point of contact, before the loop starts. To stop Lessa from a guilt loop about whether she could have prevented the past, F'lar is callous about her grief. And then runs off to immediately time-jump himself back to a time in his own past and come back. Because anything Lessa can do, F'lar can do better, and the narrative ensures that F'lar always gets what he wants.

The next section is all about studying the records of time past, which is what F'lar uses to reconstruct a general timeline of how Thread will come to fall on Pern. And again, for being a nominal fantasy novel about dragons, there's an explanation of orbital mechanics (the Red Star has a retrograde rotation compared to Pern), climate effects, and, as it turns out, the ancestors were definitely people of SCIENCE! To the point that they know what Thread actually is - a spore that can apparently survive the cold of space, and then activate at certain temperatures once it reaches Pern. (That information was divulged in the Introduction - see? Spoilers.) And that they have designs of how Thredfall works - up to six hours of attack with a fourteen-hour rest in between attacks. Thus, the placement of Weyrs so that there would always be a fresh complement of dragons, rather, "fire-lizards", to shoot down the Thread before it touched down.

So F'lar knows a lot about orbital mechanics, instinctively understands the dangers of screwing with the timeline, but is comparably light on metallurgy, biology, and genetics...ish. What, exactly, are they teaching the weyrlings, anyway? Or is F'lar just the special snowflake that understands it all? Again, we find ourselves with gestures and sweeps toward what history is on Pern, but nothing of substance or detail. F'lar is pretty confident that there will be enough dragons and kids for them in time for the Thread, because he assumes Ramoth is going to be exceptionally fertile in the time running up to the Threadfall, and the queens she produces are going to be the same. While again making reference to the promiscuity of green dragons and their riders.

> "Some green's getting herself chased again."
> 
> "And that's another item your so-called all-knowing Records never mention. Why is it that only the gold dragon can reproduce?"
> 
> F'lar did not suppress a lascivious chuckle. 
> 
> "Well, for one thing, firestone inhibits reproduction. If they never chewed stone, greens could lay, but at best they produce small beasts, and we need big ones. And for another thing - ... if the greens could reproduce, considering their amorousness and the numbers we have of them, we'd be up to our ears in dragons in next to no time."

Well, then, that's interesting. If you're a green rider, you can basically count out ever being Weyr-in-charge anywhere, and you're apparently going to be a slut. If you're not a bronze rider, there's probably no chance you'll ever be Weyrleader. What this does, though, is stratify the dragons into the fighting classes and the noble classes that lead them, but don't actually flame Thread themselves. And we're supposed to accept this, basically, because the dragons chose the kids they want to Impress upon.

Which says a lot of things, most of them Unfortunate. If you're not appropriately-minded, you'll be killed by a dragon. If you are, though, a dragon will select you based on your innate personality. You've impressed a Green? Congratulations, you're a slut. Gold? Excellent, you're...pure-blooded? Bronze? You're...ambitious? Ruthless? Willing to sexually assault your Weyrwoman? This does not look good. We have yet to see what the overarching virtue of the other dragon colors, but I'm not holding my breath that it's anything good.

And oh, look, a convenient distraction - Ramoth's laying her eggs! Forty-one, to be exact. And F'lar, Traditionalist Extraordinaire, basically throws out all the traditions out the window regarding eggs and candidates and who's allowed to watch (fathers only, though - F'lar's upheaval has limits, after all) and...there are no casualties, because the candidates know what to do with awkward dragons. Ramoth's queen goes to a rival for F'lar's affection, so Lessa is able to send off a potential usurper to manage their own Weyr, even though the narrative wants to paint Lessa as jealous of others vying for F'lar's attention, and everything is running smoothly, and the preparations for Thread are going according to plan.

So here's a good place to stop, because the next section is where the battle plan meets the actual enemy.


	9. Giant Space Fleas From Nowhere

When we last left Lessa, her dragon had just hatched a clutch of forty-one eggs, and nobody got killed in the process, F'lar and Lessa have both discovered that dragons can move through both space and time, and F'lar ditched traditions in favor of practicality. We suspect his brother's influence.

**Dragonflight: Part III: Content Notes: Domestic Abuse, Sexism, Classism**

Now, however, the moment of truth has arrived. Although F'lar misses it badly, finally not being able to interpret everything perfectly in time to ready everything. But note well, dear readers, that F'lar is allowed to make an admitted mistake only _after_ we have discovered that dragons can move through time, So F'lar can fix the error and destroy the Thread that has already begun to fall as if he had spotted everything in time and anticipated the drop.

Oh, and Lessa lets slip that she can talk to any dragon she wants. Which is conveniently the last element in F'lar's grand plan, because he needed some way of communicating everywhere in the world simultaneously if necessary to fight Thread. F'lar reacts to this news with his predictable anger, but this time, Lessa cuts him off at the pass.

> "And you, you have been sitting there, spitefully holding the..."
> 
> "I am NOT spiteful," she screamed at him. "I said I was sorry. I am. But you have a nasty, smug habit of keeping your own counsel. How was I supposed to know you didn't have the same trick? You're F'lar, the Weyrleader. You can do anything. Only you're just as bad as R'gul because you never _tell_ me half the things I ought to know..."
> 
> F'lar reached out and shook her until her angry voice was stopped.

...and a lot of good it does her, apparently. Fuck you, F'lar, you shit-eating asshole! I'm running out of ways to try and explain how violence and threats against people who disagree with you is wrong, no matter what the narrative absolves you of. Lessa is exactly right here, and F'lar needs to listen, which he is fundamentally incapable of doing.

And then there's the other thing - Lessa's been promoted from "stay at home and babysit the fertile dragon" to Mission Control, which means...stay at home and relay communication between all the others who get to go out and fight. Wait, that's not a promotion, just a change of focus. Can't have our fertile queen chewing firestone, because then there wouldn't be more eggs, which is the very much most important thing for our noblewoman to be doing. Let the less-noble-born go fight thread, and, as a handy coincidence, those lower-class dragons won't be able to reproduce, either. It's population control of the undesirables, thanks to a conveniently extraterrestrial theat. Which means this whole thing isn't just hinting at classism, it's wallowing in it. 

So, F'lar heads off to fight Thread, at the time it started to fall, while other women at home prepare to be the healers and medics. Oh, and Stockholm Syndrome has set in for Lessa. Fucknuggets.

> "Most important, if something goes wrong, you'll have to wait till a bronze is at least a year old to fly Ramoth..."
> 
> "No one's flying Ramoth but Mnementh," she cried, her eyes sparkling fiercely.
> 
> F'lar crushed her against him, his mouth bruising hers as if all her sweetness and strength must come with him. He released her so abruptly that she staggered back against Ramoth's lowered head.

The narrative always gives F'lar what he wants. And this time, it validates all the abuse, all the threats, all the violence, everything absolutely wrong that F'lar has done and will continue to do. This...fuck. If F'lar is supposed to be romantic to someone, it's in the Christian Grey fashion, I guess. 

After this, the battle plan meets the enemy. Dragons chew firestone as the Threads arrive (so apparently, it's contraceptive effect only works on females - really fucking convenient, indeed.) Then, there's a lot of fire-breathing, because even one Thread, if allowed to burrow into the ground, will devastate a wide area, consuming all the organic matter and energy available. The southern continent has already been devastated, we are told, so there's an imperative to get them all. In addition to the mobile flamethrower squad, there's a lot of popping into hyperspace any time a dragon or rider is hit, because the intense cold of _between_ is instant death to Thread, which prevents it from using dragon or rider as the host for its voracious feeding. F'lar, Weyrleader, commander of forces, abuser of women...is rendered basically the morale force for his dragon, whose instinct is the only reason the Thread fighting tactics work.

> He, F'lar, bronze rider, suddenly felt superfluous. It was the dragons who were fighting this engagement. You encouraged your beast, comforted him when the Threads burned, but you depended on his instinct and speed.

And then F'lar takes one in the face, and his entire macho facade crumbles in the face of the intense pain of being burnt by the Thread. He recovers quickly, though, after he flails wildly to get the Thread off. (My personal headcanon has him flailing and screaming at an octave above his normal speaking register, but that's because I'm not following the narrative's insistence that I be concerned for F'lar's heatlth.) The rest of the fight occurs without incident, although the intensity stays high the whole time, and the dragons warp home, unconcerned about the possible unstable time loop they've created for the thankfully-uninhabited area.

Where we pick up Lessa, who not only has to relay messages about everything going on, but is also apparently expected to be field general in F'lar's absence. Which puts a nice point on how stupid it is for F'lar to be leading the strike and taking all of his lieutenants with him - someone with tactical knowledge of The Plan should be held back just in case the wrong people die. A few moments after Lessa finishes with the orders F'lar left regarding warning Holds and dispatching the second wave of fighters, the first wave's fighting wings return above the weyr.

At which point someone, preferably Lessa, should curse them out so thoroughly that the broadcastable transcript would simply read [La Marseillaise.] Because if it's possible to be wrong about your _space_ position in space-time, with disastrous results, then it should logically follow that it is possible to be wrong about your _time_ position in space-time. I somehow doubt that two entities existing in the same spot in space-time will end well for either of them, and it's not like someone can undo their own telefrag. (Unless, of course, every telefrag is reversed by hopping back in time and moving the appropriate person out of the soon-to-be-occupied airspace, but there's another potential source of Unstable Time Loops. Maybe there are fixed points in time here, too?) The Weyrs are going to have to designate certain airspace as arrival space, which one never occupies for longer than it takes to clear it after a grouping arrives...and to somehow communicate that groups that depart must return within their designated return window or fly the long way home until a new window is communicated to them for arrival. In other words, Pern needs an air traffic control system.

There's very little rest, however, as the riders are needed elsewhere. Just enough time for Lessa to get jealous that the other queen's rider, Kylara, put all the healing salve on F'lar and Mnementh. And for Ramoth to complain about not getting to fight Thread, to which Lessa retorts by insulting green dragons. (The Stockholm Syndrome is really taking hold.) Soon after the fighters depart, Lessa sends C'gan, the rider of an older blue dragon and commander of the weyrlings, to get more firestone to F'nor's fight. And C'gan comes back and dies from Threadburn, having had his entire body and dragon attacked. This is apparently the catalyst that seals Lessa's decision on the future.

> F'lar had told her long ago that she must look beyond the narrow confines of Hold Ruatha and mere revenge. He was, as usual, right. As Weyrwoman under his tutelage, she had further learned that living was more than raising dragons and Spring Games. Living was struggling to do something impossible - to succeed, or die, knowing you had tried!
> 
> Lessa realized that she had, at last, fully accepted her role: as Weyrwoman and as mate, to help F'lar shape men and events for many Turns to come - to secure Pern against the Threads.
> 
> Lessa threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin high.

And thus we have transitioned Lessa fully from independent, strong, cunning, and utterly traumatized, to a helpmeet content to play second part and support to F'lar, which has also apparently allowed her to come to terms with all the trauma that she's suffered. Lessa has no twitch or flashblack or issues at all with the death of someone from something impersonal, but instead comes to her ultimate realization through that.

And in Ruatha Hold, Jaxom, son of Gemma, slept well and without nightmares of a woman plunging a knife into his chest. (Okay, the narrative doesn't say this explicitly, but I suspect that's what happens.)

Next time: F'lar and Lessa learn that "Thou shalt not fuck up the timestream" is not merely a suggestion.


	10. Fuck your paradoxes, I'm the main character!

When we last left the narrative, Threadfall happened, dragons and riders were injured, although only one rider died, Lessa completed her transformation from strong-willed independent trauma-sufferer to F'lar's kept woman, and F'lar gets everything he wants, including (temporarily) a strand of Thread IN THE FAAAAAAACE.

**Dragonflight: Parts III-IV: Content Notes: Slut-shaming, Sexism**

So part III closes out with F'lar and Lessa suffering insomnia, having now seen what actual Threadfall is like. F'lar is fretting that he doesn't have enough dragons or ground crews to ensure all the Thread gets burnt up. Lessa is worried about F'lar getting hurt and jealous he let Kylara salve his wounds - she wants Kylara gone. Preferably very far away in space and time. Which gives F'lar an idea - send Kylara's queen off to the Southern Continent, ten years in the past, where they'll breed up sufficient numbers to fill up the remaining Weyrs by the time Threadfall arrives in the present.

Which is apparently too much of a paradox for the universe to handle, as it sends F'nor, tanned and clearly suffering from the effects of being too close to himself in the same time, to stop the plot from happening.

> "F'lar, it's not working out! You can't be alive in two times at once!...I don't know how much longer we can last like this. We're all affected. Some days not as badly as others....Your dragons are all right," F'nor assured the Weyrleader with a bitter laugh. "It doesn't bother them. They keep all their wits about them. But the riders...all the weyrfolk...we're shadows, half-alive, like dragonless men, part of us gone forever. Except Kylara....All she wants to do is go back and watch herself. That woman's egomania will destroy us all, I'm afraid...We'll stay as long as we can...so it won't be long enough, but we tried! We tried!"

Suitably warned, F'nor leaves and Part III comes to a close.

Even though it was written a long time after this, I feel like it's worth mentioning Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality here, specifically the first-year Harry's plot to produce an Unstable Time Loop and see how the universe resolves it. Using his newly-obtained Time-Turner, Harry intends to go back and place a scrap of paper with the first number of a mathematical sequence inside, then return a little after he left, open the chest, observe the number inside, then go back again with the Time-Turner and replace he number in the trunk with the next one in the sequence, creating an Infinte Loop that is also unstable. Harry hops back in time to place his first number, opens the chest, and sees a piece of paper already inside the chest, inscribed with "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME TRAVEL" in his own hand. Harry takes the hint, writes "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME TRAVEL" on the blank sheet in his hand, changes it with the one in the chest, and pops home, creating a Stable Time Loop instead.

Part IV opens with F'lar absolutely not taking the hint and ordering Lessa to proceed with the plan as outlined, because it potentially results in more dragons, and that F'nor didn't say the plan failed entirely, just that it was approaching the breaking point. Normally, we should be shocked that F'lar would throw his half-brother under the bus so easily, but I think that by this point, I've demonstrated that F'lar really is that much of an ass. Also, in the bit right before the quotation above, Lessa thinks to herself that F'lar intended to do violence to whomever was interrupting their study, even if it was his half-brother, and didn't because of the importance of the news. So F'lar really is a fucking monster to everyone. And Lessa, after condemning F'nor to his fate, insists that F'lar and her have sex. Which suggests that Lessa's probably not going to recover from her Stockholm Syndrome and will eventually be just as monstrous as F'lar. Not because she wants sex, but because she wants sex right after they both decided to hurt a lot of people deliberately.

So F'nor is sent on his secret mission anyway, with lots of ribbing from F'lar about how Kylara is going to try extra hard to put the moves on him, because she's a slut, according to the narrative, and she tries extra-hard against those men that don't sleep with her immediately. Which, I might point out, is in addition to her ego that endangers the secret mission. So, of the three named queen riders to this point, Jora was a slob and utterly unconcerned about her appearance, so everything suffered, Kylara is a narcissist and a slut, so her Weyr will suffer as well, and Lessa is...well, was, secretive, avaricious, and cold-hearted toward her true destiny, F'lar. This highly problematic framing reinforces the idea that women are defined by their worst qualities, which the narrative wants to reinforce at every opportunity, to make the men look wise and virtuous, even when they're being complete monsters to women and everyone else. Fax was the last unambiguously villainous man, according to the narrative, and he died back in Part I. 

The narrative helpfully reminds us of Lessa's flaw soon after the big reminder of Kylara's.

> She was still overly - and to his mind, foolishly - sensitive at having had to resign her claim at Ruatha Hold for the Lady Gemma's posthumous son.

Gee, F'lar, why might that be? It couldn't be that you accepted and enforced the throwaway line of the tyrant that killed her family, installing his son as the Lord Holder, over her older and more legitimate claim to the Hold because he was a man, his son is a man, and Lessa's just a revenge-crazed woman. It must be something else. Bitches be crazy, amirite? No _way_ they could have control over any land when there is a perfectly good man that could be in charge instead. Women and queen dragons, apparently, should just stay home, run the household, and make babies. Fuck you, F'lar.

So F'lar calls council of the Lords Holder and the Mastercrafters and lays out for them the truth of the matter - Thread is here, it's going to get worse, and we'll be able to show you when and where it will strike. Oh, and there aren't enough dragons to go around, so if you want to make sure your crops are protected, you're going to have to commit your own people to making sure nothing burrows, or even lands. Which gets the Lords angry until the Masterharper, keeper of lore and tradition (Traditioooooooon!), gives the Lords Holder a telling-off that basically amounts to, "Who was right about this? We were. You're lucky we don't leave you to be destroyed by the Thread. Now sit down, shut up, and do as we tell you." The Crafthalls get on board by mentioning that they have interesting things in their records that could be useful, like "heavy black water" that burns particularly long and well, mechanical designs for machines and flamethrowers, and a lovely etching acid called "agenothree" that, if The Other Wiki is correct, will be perfect for inducing explosive reactions with any Thread it contacts. After the meeting, F'nor of just-laid-eggs time reports on the success of the plan, and F'lar and the Masterharper talk about the plan as F'lar instructs him on the time charts for Threadfall. F'lar is anxious about the results, and the Masterharper, apparently no slouch on the Timey-Wimey Ball, gives him solid advice.

> "Send a rider ahead in time to see if it is sufficient," Robinton suggested helpfully. "Save you a few days' worrying."
> 
> "I don't know how to get to a _when_ that has not yet happened. You must give your dragon reference points, you know. How can you refer him to times that have not yet occurred?" 
> 
> "You have an imagination. Project it."

I'm sure this will come in handy at some point, when F'lar wants to be on the receiving end of an Unstable Time Loop, instead of causing one.

Then we switch to Lessa and F'nor scouting the Southern Continent, arriving first by a time jump to a familiar Weyr, then doing a space jump out into the ocean. Which, if it requires clear references, runs into the issue F'lar raised earlier - how do we get to places we have never been before through hyperspace? Perhaps, indeed, the reference points just need to be imagined in the right places so as to permit the dragon to move. Unfortunately, one of the artifacts that appears not to have survived from ancient time are latitude-longitude coordinates and lines, which would make warping to the correct places much easier, once someone arrived at the correct temporal location. Anyway, verdant, lush, vegetation-filled Southern Continent with new foods and fruits and such. They scout an appropriate location and return, where Lessa collapses from the strain and F'lar gives his brother some very strict instructions about not fucking up the timeline, because he doesn't know what the paradoxes will do if F'nor should observe himself in the same time and location.

And then we get to see that F'lar actually cares about Lessa...

> She looked fragile, childlike, and very precious to him. F'lar smiled to himself. So she was jealous of Kylara's attentions yesterday. He was pleased and flattered. Never would Lessa learn from him that Kylara, for all her bold beauty and sensuous nature, did not have one tenth the attraction that the unpredictable, dark, and delicate Lessa held. Even her stubborn intractableness, her keen and malicious humor, added zest to their relationship. With a tenderness that he would never show her awake, F'lar bent and kissed her lips.

...like an abuser loves his victim. F'lar thinks it's cute when Lessa gets acid with him, probably because he knows the narrative won't let him get a shiv in the back. If Lessa were at least as strong as he is, he would not be nearly as tolerant of her as he is now. And because all he has to do is shake Lessa violently and she'll give in to him. Which he demonstrates again not too soon from now, which we'll see next time.


	11. She's Smarter Than All of You

When we last left our narrative-proclaimed hero, he had shown equal parts macho and tender, while Lessa went back in time to implement a potentially paradoxical plan and came back exhausted. Thredfall has happened, and now the clean-up and scouring has to happen, or the Thread that fell will devastate large swaths of the planet.

**Dragonflight, Part IV: Content Notes: Domestic Abuse, Sexism**

This section of the chapter starts with a demonstration of agenothree - The Other Wiki is quite correct - it kills Thread very dead. And would be an effective deterrent, if only there were a mechanism by which it could be spread evenly and in quantity over affected land so as to quickly kill the Thread that burrows. We are taken from that task, though, by the Masterharper, who has discovered a giant hole in the Records - a secret meeting, and then the Masterharper is gone for several weeks without leaving any record. Soon after that, the records of the vanished Weyrs stop abruptly. And then, a song that is meant to be remembered is introduced into the canon, in a discordant and minor key, asking why the Weyrs vanished.

Lessa, despite only having been awake a few minutes before, hits the most likely answer - the Weyrs all jumped forward in time. No records were left because there was nobody there to leave them. F'lar thinks Lessa plans on going back.

> F'lar grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her, eyes wild with fear.
> 
> "Not even Pern is worth losing you, or Ramoth. Lessa, Lessa, don't you dare disobey me in this." His voice dropped to an intense, icy whisper, shaking with anger.  
>  [...]  
>  Lessa did not shake off F'lar's viselike grip on her shoulders as she gazed at Robinton [the Masterharper].  
>  [...]  
>  "Ramoth is not afraid to try." Lessa said, her mouth set in a determined line.

In any other movie, this would be where we get the [Big Damn Kiss](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigDamnKiss). Instead, we hear the arrival of the regent of Ruatha. Lessa is nonplussed at his arrival...

> "It is hard enough for Lytol to ride another's dragon or come here at all, Lessa of Ruatha. Do not increase his torment one jot with your childishness," F'lar said sternly.
> 
> Lessa dropped her eyes, furious with F'lar for speaking so to her in front of Robinton.

...but F'lar chooses to privilege the manpain of Lytol being without his dragon over Lessa's pain of having had her family killed, had ten years of hiding, and then having her legitimate claim sidelined by the very man she is Weyrwoman to in favor of the son of the man who killed her. It's _Lessa_ , though, who's being childish, according to F'lar, who is always right.

Which means he was also right about Lessa trying to warp backward hundreds of Turns into the past, after she managed a pretext of going to see a tapestry, one of the few surviving artifacts of the very past, hung in Ruatha where it came from. Because all you need to do is give your dragon clear details about when and where you want to go, and the dragon should be able to get there. Even if your clear details come from a tapestry. What she doesn't realize is that warping through hyperspace on the time axis requires more time spent in hyperspace, and that spending a lot of time in hyperspace is taxing on both mind and body. So Lessa spends a significant amount of time recovering, then convincing the other Weyrleaders to bring their entire fleets forward in time. The other Weyrleaders are ready for the challenge and use their advanced scientific knowledge, as well as the astronomical structures they've constructed for tracking the Red Star, to jump forward in twenty-year bursts, each wing above their own Weyr so as to avoid telefragging each other. (See? _Air Traffic Control_.) Right before the last jump, Lessa realizes she's back in the same year where Fax killed her family again, and the strain of existing in three places at once is highly stressful. So the last jump happens much quicker than the previous ones. 

The narrative then shows us, in quick succession, an utterly distraught F'lar, Lessa meeting Lytol and finding out she misjudged the last jump by two days into the future, with a reference point transmitted, and a lot of Idiot Ball on Lessa's part about how Future-Lytol can know how to send Lessa back to past-Lytol (with one very wise observation - Lessa knows F'lar will abuse her when she gets back) then the course-correcting two-day jump. Lessa is right, again, but F'lar only abuses her a little in the presence of guests, having finally shown her some warmth and affection. Which is not to say it's okay, just that it's less. 

The arrival of the full Weyrs makes R'gul out to have always been holding the Idiot Ball about everything, even though he's had multiple immediate examples to disprove his theories about everything, and has displayed an admirable amount of skepticism and demand for proof throughout this entire book. And we learn that with the ancient flamethrower technology brought forward, it's possible for the fertile queens to fight and fly, too. (Although everyone, ancient and modern alike, is very interested in using the agenothree, since it apparently fertilizes the ground as well as kills Thread.) It's agreed that Kylara should stay South and keep her Weyr there. All this, F'lar springs on Lessa after she's bathed...

> "I hate you!" Lessa snapped, unable to evade F'lar as he pinned her cloth-swathed body to his.
> 
> "Even when I tell you Fandarel [the Mastersmith] has a flamethrower for you so you can join the queens' wing?"
> 
> She stopped squirming in his arms and started at her, disconcerted that he had outguessed her.
> 
> "And that Kylara will be installed as Weyrwoman in the south...in this time? As Weyrleader, I need my peace and quiet between battles..."
> 
> The cloth fell from her body to the floor as she responded to his kiss as ardently as if dragon-roused.

...and apparently, Lessa is very turned on by getting what she wants, for a change. Could this be the sign that their relationship will turn from F'lar abusing her horribly to something approaching love and respect? Will F'lar actually apologize? Will Lessa leave her abuser by orchestrating a different bronze dragon to mate with Ramoth? We'll have to see in the next book.

The last short section is again fighting Thread, but serves really only to foreshadow the idea that dragons, as hyperspace-travel entities, should be able to jump between worlds as well, and that means at some point, the dragons and their riders will scour the Red Star of Thread at the source. F'lar tucks this idea into his head, thinking that he doesn't want to give Lessa any ideas.

She's smarter than all of you, F'lar. If you've just thought about it, she already is planning it and trying to figure out what she'll need to make it work. You can't stop her. You can only hope to collaborate, so you can tag along when she inevitably goes for it.

And that's Dragonflight. There are appendices for information, but they also are likely additions after publication, and as such, contain spoiler data.

While we're in the break, consider the aspects of sexism involved in the shortening of a male dragonrider's name (Lytol to L'tol) that are not extended to female dragonriders (Lessa remains Lessa, even after Ramoth), regardless of which time period the dragonriders are in.


End file.
